Liberalism and political correctness may lead to the eventual demise of Starbucks. Starbucks has opened Pandora’s box after two black man loitering in a Starbucks were not given the bathroom code, due to not being a customer.

Now due to political correctness they said anyone can us the restrooms re hang out in Starbucks without being paying customers, its now the personal clubhouse of anyone who wants it to be.

This is a complete reversal of the old policy, which said you couldn’t use restrooms or anything else unless you were a paying customer. The Philadelphia incident that prompted such hand-wringing started with an employee’s determination to enforce that policy, even to the point of calling the police because two men wanted to occupy a table but not order until a third companion showed up to join them.

Starbucks caught heat in the past for refusing to even let uniformed police officers use their bathrooms. Now it free to use for homeless people or anyone, as they take a table all day. There may not be any room left for paying customer, but heck that’s okay, right?

Now everyone can come in, use the bathroom, charge their phones or laptops, presumably even sit there and do work (otherwise why offer the use of wifi?) and they don’t have to order anything. Ever.

This is not going to turn out well. Let’s start with this question: If you’re not buying anything, how long is too long to occupy a table while paying customers have nowhere to sit? It’s not a trivial question. At certain times of the day it’s hard to get a seat in a Starbucks, and that’s when everyone has to buy something in order to sit down. If you now let people off the street come in and sit indefinitely, you’re going to have a lot of paying customers either standing against the wall or simply leaving.

You’re also going to find that it’s harder to keep the store clean, harder to keep the bathrooms clean and harder to prevent theft if you’re welcoming people into your store – and telling them to stay as long as they like – when they can’t afford to buy even the items Starbucks offers that only cost a few bucks.

It’s weird that they present this as part of an effort to “end homelessness,” when the whole thing started as a racial controversy (although the black and white hands shaking is a nice pandering touch). Letting people use the bathroom and charge their phones doesn’t do anything to end homelessness. People aren’t homeless because they need a place to pee. They’re homeless because they don’t do the basic things that would keep them consistently employed and earning enough to afford a place to live. You can get into all kinds of discussions about whether societal steps can help to make a difference, but nothing Starbucks is offering to do here will impact any of it.

Far from ending homelessness, you’re going to make your stores magnets for people with nothing to do and nowhere else to go.

You know who really could benefit from this policy? Regular paying customers, but we like to do my work in places like Starbucks, and it would save me some serious money if I could sit there for hours – plugged in and using their wifi – and I didn’t have to buy anything. I could basically make Starbucks my office for free. Who needs office suites when Starbucks is free?

But you know what? We are not going to do that, because if I we are taking up space that a paying customer could otherwise occupy. So if I go to Starbucks, I will make a purchase, because I can and I need to respect their business model if I’m going to use their store as my workplace.

The now-discarded policy – that you had to buy something to use the facilities – was not unreasonable, and was to the benefit of regular customers as well as Starbucks. Now Starbucks has panicked and gone completely in the other direction, all because one incident of trying to enforce the old policy didn’t go well.

They fired a female manager, for enforcing company policy, and by so vehemently disavowing her actions as “racist,” Starbucks has made itself vulnerable to a lawsuit from her, for wrongful termination, as well as publicly painting a target on her back.

They’re bending over backwards to pacify a group who don’t by their product, but who will happily contribute to Starbucks’ bankruptcy, by exploiting their virtue signalling.

Is this the beginning of the end for Starbucks? As we watch liberalism eat itself up.

Other Starbucks News:

On the heels of accusations of racial profiling by a Starbucks worker in Philadelphia and plans to train workers nationwide to prevent the behavior in the future, Starbucks may need to undertake another sort of training altogether. Employees should not videotape customers in Starbucks bathrooms According to Fox 5 in Atlanta: A woman discovered a hidden recording device in a Starbucks bathroom Tuesday morning, according to the Alpharetta Department of Public Safety. “She found it taped to the bottom of the baby changing station which is located directly in front of the toilet seat,” Officer Howard Miller said

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One Comment

We should all do our share to help Starbucks implement their new policy. Pick up a homeless person and drive him to a Starbucks. I’m certain the patrons and the staff of the store will welcome him and thank you.